The Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) was created in 2006 and is a reference center for personalized medicine in oncology. Thanks to its pioneering model of multidisciplinary and translational research and its participation in international consortia and collaborative projects with other prestigious centers around the world, it has positioned itself as one of the most relevant comprehensive centers in Europe. In line with its mission goal of advancing patient care, VHIO strives to transform the latest discoveries in translational research into novel concepts that are tested in early-stage clinical trials and offer new opportunities for cancer patients. As part of the 4.UNCAN.eu, VHIO coordinates the prioritization of research programs that will form the basis for a strategic research agenda in cancer at the European level, and help to identify use cases to support the creation of a European Research Data Hub.
Biographies of team members
Josep Tabernero
Josep Tabernero holds MD and PhD degrees from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and is currently Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and Professor of Medicine at UVic-UCC. He has been Principal Investigator of several Phase I pharmacodynamic studies and translational projects evaluating tumor-directed targeted therapies and immune-based treatments.
His research aims at potentiating molecular therapies targeting specific oncoproteins and accelerating more effective personalized cancer medicines for patients harbouring cancer-driving mutations and altered signalling pathways.
Dr. Tabernero serves on the Editorial Boards of various top-tier journals including Annals of Oncology, ESMO Open, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment Reviews, and Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology. He has (co) authored approximately 500 peer-reviewed papers with an H-Index of 95.
He served as the President (2018 – 2019) and Past President (2020-2021) of the European Society for Medical Oncology´s (ESMO) and is part of its Public Policy and Cancer Medicines committees. He is member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He has also been a member of the Educational and Scientific Committees of ESMO, ECCO, ASCO, AACR, AACR/NCI/EORTC, ASCO Gastrointestinal, TAT and WCGIC meetings.
Alejandro Piris
Alejandro Piris is the Head of the Scientific Management Area at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona (Spain). Some of his tasks at VHIO include the coordination and management of scientific research proposals; monitoring and evaluation of existing programs; strategic decisions on scientific programs; identification of competitive research opportunities and international research consortia. He coordinates the VHIO Internal Scientific Committee and is evaluator of national and international research calls. He completed a Master’s in Management of R, D & I in Health Sciences. Previously, he worked as Research Project Manager in Translational Cancer Drugs Pharma and was senior consultant in Mensor (Research Department). In terms of academic training, he graduated in Veterinary Sciences (Complutense University of Madrid) and holds a PhD cum laude in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Pasteur Institute and Denis Diderot University, Paris). He has also completed a post-doctoral stay at the National Center of Biotechnology (Madrid), focused on the design of new viral vaccines. He is first author (4) and co-author (7) in 11 scientific publications and several communications in international congresses.
Javier Carmona
Javier Carmona graduated in Biology at University Autónoma of Madrid, and in 2013 he obtained his PhD with extraordinary doctorate award under the supervision of Dr Manel Esteller at IDIBELL (Barcelona, Spain), investigating the alterations in DNA methylation that promote cancer metastasis. Following his defense, he joined the laboratory of Dr Jose Baselga as a postdoctoral fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA) to investigate mechanisms of resistance to therapy in patients with HER2-driven breast cancer. During his trajectory in academic research to date, he has co-authored more than 30 publications in translational cancer research and has contributed to several presentations at international conferences. In 2016, Javier joined the editorial team of Nature Medicine to coordinate the areas of oncology and artificial intelligence in biomedicine, and in 2019 he became Deputy Editor at the journal. During his time at Nature Publishing Group, Javier led the cross-journal cancer community of editors, organized several international scientific meetings, and contributed to the generation of new guidelines for reporting clinical research involving artificial intelligence methodologies. In February 2022 he was appointed Scientific Strategy Officer at Vall d’Hebron Oncology Institute (VHIO), where he contributes to the research activities of VHIO and supports the international relations and strategic vision of the Institute.
Neus Bayó
Neus Bayó, PhD, PMP, is Scientific Manager in the Scientific Management Area at Vall d’Hebron Oncology Institute (VHIO) since 2017. She is certified in Project Management, and has ample experience in research management, academic research (PhD at the Catalan Institute of Oncology, postdoc at IGMM in Montpellier and the University of Barcelona) and the biopharmaceutical start-up ecosystem (Archivel Farma s.l). At VHIO, she has gained expertise in scientific management of international projects and is responsible for the preparation and management of European initiatives involving groups of VHIO where she supports the scientific development and consortium definition of the proposals. Among many international projects, she has coordinated the involvement of VHIO in the CRUK-Accelerator programme, the CRUK-Cancer Grand Challenge awards, or the H2020-IMI2 initiative. She also manages strategic institutional initiatives such as the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence.